Cocco Bello Cafe: Business Analysis

Procedure

The restaurant is a self-managed team. Everybody knows what they are supposed to do and no employee is more than the other employee. The restaurant breaks into three different departments: floor, bar, and kitchen. On the floor are the servers; on weekdays only two servers are needed, while on weekends three servers are needed. They take care of the customers, having the menus and silverware clean, setting up the tables, folding napkins, and keeping the visible atmosphere to customers clean. Because servers are the one that makes the most interaction with customers, it will be considered the front office. The next department is the bar, where two people are needed for lunch and one for dinner during weekdays, while for weekends is only one for lunch and two for dinner. The job of the employees behind the bar is getting the drinks, bread, coffees, desserts and soups to servers. They also take care of take-out orders. They do not have frequent interaction with customers , so they fall under the hybrid office. The third department is the kitchen where there are only five people. One is the chef, three of them are his sous chefs, and the other one is the dishwasher. They break their jobs according to the menu. One is in charge of the salads, the other one is in charge of pasta and paninis, the third one is in charge of all the chicken dishes and fish dishes, and the chef is in charge of cooking all the specials.

NextPOS for Restaurants

Cocco Bello Cafe uses NextPOS system. It is very advanced and easy to use. It has many features that are completely necessary for the restaurant to keep running smoothly. With NextPOS servers have the flexibility to customize the setting of the tables in the computer if they were to move the tables around. NextPOS let servers clock-in and cock-out. It lets servers send orders, modify orders, void orders, settle orders, adjust prices, open orders for dine-in or take outs, and do a sales report.

Inventory

Cocco Bello is a small restaurant; therefore its inventory is small as well. The chef is in charge of the inventory. He checks on the inventory every day. Therefore, he gets the supplies everyday such as meat, dairy and produce. Dry food or canned foods are delivered only once a week. The strategy that the chef uses to keep track of the meet is that he orders 25lbs of chicken on the bone, 25lbs of chicken off the bone, 20lbs of fish, and 20lbs of steak every day and whatever is left at the end of the day, that's the first thing he sells next day. If he adds a certain dish to the specials, then he has a higher demand for that week based on that certain dish; the same for produce and dairy. The rest of ingredients that they need like olive oil, salt, pepper, etc., are bought at restaurant depot or ShopRite.

Improvement

Cocco Bello Café has improved in many ways during the last three years. One of the improvements was for employees to have a dress code so the restaurant would look more professional. The owner and employees started to have meetings once every two months. They would discuss or try to solve anything such as, if there were any problems between employees, if everyone there were doing what they were supposed to do, if they had any complaints from customers, employees would give ideas or opinions on how to improve service, or anything related to the restaurant.

Servers realized that customers were complaining too much about the service. Hence, servers started to think on how to cut down time waste. For example: servers would give customers bread, and olive oil along with the menus, where customers would spill olive oil and breadcrumbs on the menus. Therefore, servers had to clean the menus every time after they took orders. Servers realized it was a waste of time especially during peak hours. The solution for that was giving the menus when customers arrived, take the order, put menus back, and then give them bread and olive oil.

The way servers split tables are by keeping count of clients that come in and each server gets his/her own table, and who ever has less people he/she take the next table. Servers would tape a piece of paper on top of the counter and keep track of all customers that came in, and during peak hours it will get really confusing because more than one table would walk in at once and it was really time consuming figuring out what table belongs to who. Thus, what made it even more time consuming was that “one tab” would be considered if they had a dish that cost more than $20. Therefore, The owner and servers came with a solution called “pooling” during peak hours, which means servers would have to work together and share all tables, they didn’t have to keep track of customers, and at the end of the night they would have to split tips evenly. Instead of wasting time figuring out what table belongs to who, servers would use that time to focus more on customers. That little change, made a huge notice in the restaurant. Servers noticed that people were getting their food, drinks, bread faster and that customers were more satisfy with their service.

Another complaint that the restaurant had to deal with almost every day was wrong orders. The kitchen would tell servers to what table the food had to go and servers would bring the food to those tables that they were told. Servers noticed that mistakes were coming from the kitchen. At one of the meetings, an employee suggested that servers had to check the order before taking the food to the table. As a result, it cut down a lot of mistakes and complains as well.

Success

Another reason why Cocco Bello Café is successful besides quality is because the owner believes in equality. He treats every employee the same, and make employees feel comfortable and useful in the restaurant. 90% of the time Antonio acts as a friend that you can joke around with or a person you can rely on for advice. He makes everybody contribute to the restaurant and employees feel like they got a duty with the restaurant success. Therefore, employees are always working together on how to make improvement as previously mentioned.